The Late Show

"Renée Ballard works the night shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing none as each morning she turns her cases over to day shift detectives. A once up-and-coming detective, she's been given this beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor. But one night she catches two cases she doesn't want to part with: the brutal beating of a prostitute left for dead in a parking lot and the killing of a young woman in a nightclub shooting. Ballard is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her own partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night. As the cases entwine they pull her closer to her own demons and the reason she won't give up her job no matter what the department throws at her."-- from author website.

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Renée Ballard works the midnight shift in Hollywood, beginning many investigations but finishing few, as each morning she turns everything over to the daytime units.
It's a frustrating job for a once up-and-coming detective, but it's no accident. She's been given the beat as punishment after filing a sexual harassment complaint against a supervisor.

One night, however, Ballard catches two assignments she that she doesn't want to part with. First, a prostitute is brutally beaten and left for dead in a parking lot. All signs point to a crime of premeditation, not passion, by someone with big evil on his mind. Then, she sees a young waitress breathe her last after being caught in nightclub shooting. Though dubbed a peripheral victim, the waitress buys Ballard a way in, and this time she is determined not to give up at dawn. Against orders and her partner's wishes, she works both cases by day while maintaining her shift by night.

As the investigations entwine, Ballard is forced to face her own demons and confront danger she never could have imagined. To find justice for these victims, who can't speak for themselves, she must put not only her career but her life on the line. (Description slightly edited from the book jacket flap.)

This is the first book in this new series.

The Renée Ballard series has the trademarks of the other series of Michael Connelly: detailed forensics and quality writing.

Dark Sacred Night, which will be published in October 2018, will team Renée Ballard and Harry Bosch.

Disappointing. When Rankin wanted to move away from his Rebus series, he brought us a new character, Inspector Fox, who was very different from Rebus in his whole personality, and in his role in police work. It worked. Connelly has just brought us Bosch in female form: an outsider who is in conflict with authority, has trouble keeping a steady partner, has been demoted as punishment for breaking the rules but feels solving crimes is a sacred duty. Surprised Connelly would be so lazy. Surprised the reviews are so positive.

Like other readers I noticed the similarity between Ballard and Bosch immediately. It feels somewhat like Connelly stripped down Bosch to his essence and then added in new hobbies and homes and called it a new character. Despite that... I still greatly enjoy Connelly's writing. He's said that his Bosch novels are supposed to happen in real time and he doesn't know how many more he can get out before Harry should finally retire for real, so I take Ballard as a happy replacement. I also think that there are things here that are different because Ballard is female.

Ballard is working "The Late Show" because she brought a suit against a superior officer, and her partner of five years failed to back her up even though he knew the truth. Connelly does a good job of showing the "good ol' boy" attitude of many officers, without bringing into question the integrity they bring to the job. In fact, Ballard's confrontation of her ex-partner and the aftermath bring a huge dose of pathos to the novel, that could otherwise be a strict procedural. And that's Connelly's real gift is bringing a level of understanding to his characters that never paints them as black and white. A series I look forward to continuing.

I agree with the positive comments of previous reviewers, and would add that if you've been watching the Bosch series, some of the story lines in The Late Show will feel familiar. I look forward to reading more about Renee Ballard.

A great book for detective junkies like me. Connelly is as close to original noir (and quality writing) that I can find. I automatically sign up for any Connelly book that the library gets, but I was expecting another book in the Bosch series or the Lincoln lawyer series, or mixed. I was surprised by Renee Ballard, a driven and angry female detective. It is courageous move by Connelly to try to bring a female personality to life, and he does it well. The day-to-day for Ballard happens to be the current headlines about abuse of women, if nothing else of constant hits on her as an attractive woman. Don't think that Ballard can't handle the heat. The interesting parts are of her internal fight to keep herself moving forward, and to apply rules to a dangerous world. There are three crime stories going on at the same time, and also Ballard's fight with the PAB (the Police Administrative Bureau, or the Politics and Bullsh*t, take your pick). Looking forward to Ballard series #2.

Surprised that Connelly at 61 decided to add a new protagonist, Renée Ballard, to his already legendary portfolio of detectives. In one of those nights, the veteran cop Ballard, who was banished to grunt work in "The Late Show" as a result of a major spat with the old boys in LAPD, was called to several crime scenes that roused her curiosity or sense for justice. Despite of repeated warnings from the brass to stay away, naturally, the lone she-wolf resolved to investigate. A page turner of mysteries, killings and conspiracy that flip-flopped between Ballard's peaceful down-time and her intense hunt for truth. The last few sentences was a heartfelt end - woman, you got a friend!

Long-time fan of MC I cannot say I'm thrilled with this new character, it may take another book or a second read to determine. I didn't find it a page turner or something I couldn't put down & the character didn't ring quite true for me. As for Renae....the voice needs tweaking & not so rushed. My jury is still out on this. I've been in love with Harry Bosch since the beginning & finally the voice of Titus Welliver perfects the image.

Quotes

Stopping the card from being used is only part of it. That protects your corporate client. It doesn’t protect Mrs. Lantana, who had someone inside her house.

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He was a slick sleeve and maybe even a boot and too new in the division for her to know his name.
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John Jenkins had twenty-five years in and Ballard knew he had been running on empty for a long time when it came to empathy. He was a good detective—when he wanted to be. But he was like a lot of guys who had been around for so long. He just wanted a place to be left alone to do his job.
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The police headquarters downtown was called the PAB, for Police Administration Building. Guys like Jenkins believed that PAB stood for Politics and Bureaucracy, or Politics and Bullshit, take your pick.

Drag queens, cross-dressers, and transgenders were all generally referred to as dragons in vice. No distinctions were made. It wasn’t nice but it was accepted.

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We’ve seen this a hundred times before. Some guy’s cruising along, doesn’t know the territory, sees a chick on the stroll and pulls over. He makes the deal, takes her into the parking lot, and gets buyer’s remorse when he finds a Dodger dog under the miniskirt.

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She noted that there was no gunpowder stippling, and that told her that the shot came from a distance of more than four feet.

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… about twenty people were sitting and waiting. It was a variety of Hollywood hipsters and clubbers. A lot of tattoos and piercings.

The captain at Hollywood, an academy classmate of Olivas’s, put her on the night shift with Jenkins. The late show. End of story.

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“Girl at the Bar” appeared to be her most frequent role. She had played the part in an episode of a television show called Bosch, which Ballard knew was based on the exploits of a now-retired LAPD detective who had formerly worked at RHD and the Hollywood detective bureau.

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Ballard was not taking notes. When they entered the room, she had adjusted the thermostat, which actually turned on the room’s recording devices. It was wired for sight and sound.

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You’re not sorry about anything. You saw an opportunity back then and you took it. You had to throw me under the bus but you didn’t hesitate.” “No, you’re wrong.”

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… But it’s like cockroaches. You can fumigate but they always come back.”

Ballard composed a short list of details that she would enter and subtract from until she got a hit. Transgender Bite Brass Knuckles Bound Prostitute Santa Monica Boulevard

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He had probably been party to more than a few radio calls staged by detectives to create reason to case a house. It was called ghosting.

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It was the Holy Grail of detective work. It had nothing to do with evidence or legal procedure or probable cause. It was just knowing it in your gut. Nothing in her life beat it.

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“Where’s your raid jacket?” Smith said. “And I can tell you’re not wearing a vest. Number one, you should’ve had them on, Ballard. Number two, we should have been right here and in on the bust, not driving up to save your ass.”

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He was a street artist who until January had done decent business selling portraits of the former president. He reported to Ballard that images of the new president went unsold because his kind of people didn’t come to Venice Beach.

… he’d rather go to prison for five years—that’s the mandatory minimum—than have the Sinaloa Cartel put a hit on him for flipping.”

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Ballard got back into the car and folded her arms on the steering wheel. She leaned her forehead down against them and closed her eyes. She was beyond tired but her mind couldn’t let go of the case.

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She pulled to a stop in front of an aluminum-sided building with a door that was marked only with an address number. There were five other cars and a van parked near the door and a flashing-red strobe located above it.

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She noticed that two of the warehouses across the street had no outside signage either. One of them had a strobe light over the door as well. Ballard was at ground zero for the billion-dollar-plus industry that some said kept the Los Angeles economy rolling.

“How much porno did he watch?” “Look, don’t go down that road. The whole porno-made-him-do-it thing. We provide a service. People watch these films and that keeps them in check, keeps it in fantasy.”

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And there’s this saying they have about conformist society: The nail that sticks out gets pounded down.” “Okay, so what are you saying?” “I’m saying there’s a lot of guys in this department with hammers. Watch yourself.”

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“There’s no explanation for why people kill. You know that. And if you cross that line, what’s to stop you from going from one to six?”

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She knew detectives at Hollywood Division who spent hours shining their shoes and oiling their leather holsters and belts. It demanded a certain focus and concentration and took them away from the burden of cases. It cleared their minds and renewed them. For Ballard, waxing a surfboard did the same trick. She could leave everything behind.

The Lybarger admonishment was used to compel an officer to answer questions without an attorney present. It was named after an officer who was fired for refusing to do so. It compelled an officer to talk but had an exclusion that disallowed these statements from being used in a criminal proceeding against the officer.

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… she also examined for the first time the fact that she was a killer. It didn’t matter whether it was justified, she was now a part of the population that knew what it was to take a life.

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At the academy, they don’t teach you to shoot once when you need to fire your weapon. If deadly force is warranted, you use deadly force in whatever quantity is necessary to get the job done.
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The rehearsed response covered all contradictions with the threshold factor in justified homicide. Fear of death or great bodily harm to the officer or citizenry.

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Ramona was safe now, but only from one predator. She was leading a life that was sure to bring more.

“He says disorder in your young life drew you to law enforcement. A job where you enforce laws and enforce order. What do you think about that?”

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Your mind is bruised as well as your body. Like the body, the mind needs time to heal. It needs time to settle from this.

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To me it’s like the laws of physics—for every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. If you go into darkness, the darkness goes into you. You

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Home Depot with a massive parking lot. The entrance was clear and she remembered how it always used to be lined with men looking for day work. That had changed when Immigration and Customs Enforcement started routine immigration roundups.

… kill party. It had once been a secret tradition for officers to gather and drink after one of them had killed someone. It was a way of releasing the tension of a life-and-death encounter.

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VMD was a forensic technique in which applications of gold and zinc to evidence in a low-pressure environment revealed latent fingerprints on objects and materials usually deemed too porous to produce prints. The process had been successful in applications on plastics, patterned metals, and some woven fabrics.
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There were more than seventy million prints in the AFIS data bank. Sending a print through did not bring instantaneous results. And often the results, when they came, were not singular. A search often kicked out several similar prints, and that required the print tech to make the final comparison under a microscope to determine if there was a match.

Ballard could read it in his face as he went from confidence to crisis, from thinking he had a shot at talking his way out of the room to visions of never seeing daylight again. “I want a lawyer,” he said. “I’m sure you do,” Ballard said.
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You’re smart and you’re fierce.
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DSS, which Ballard remembered was Chastain’s shorthand for a witness who supposedly didn’t see shit.
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As she came through the mist and caught sight of the shore, she saw Lola at the waterline, panicked and frantically moving north and then south, unsure, her bark now a howl of fear at what she could not understand or control. She reminded Ballard of a fourteen-year-old girl who had done the same thing on a beach a long time ago. Ballard paddled harder. She wanted to get off the board, drop to her knees in the sand, and hug Lola close.